Alternatives to the Amazon Fire TV YouTube app

The YouTube app for the Amazon Fire TV leaves much to be desired. This is largely due to the app being a wrapper for www.youtube.com/tv instead of being natively written for the Fire TV. If you’re not satisfied with the YouTube experience on Fire TV, here are some alternatives.

YouTube Add-on for XBMC

XBMC is one of the best apps you could sideload onto your Fire TV. In addition to all of its great built in features, XBMC offers a slew of downloadable add-ons to expand its functionality. One great add-on for XBMC is the YouTube add-on. While it isn’t going to win any design awards, it does a great job of playing YouTube videos without a hitch.

YouTube Plugin for Plex

Plex is one of the most popular apps on the Fire TV. If you picked it up while it was on sale last month, you should definitely give the YouTube plugin a try. You will need to have the Plex Media Server software running on a computer on the same network as your Fire TV in order to use the YouTube channel plugin. Head over to your Plex Channels and add the YouTube Channel. The Channel will appear in your Plex app on the Fire TV.

YouTube for TV

YouTube for TV is Google’s official YouTube Android app for televisions. the app can be downloaded for free from the Google Play store using the evozi APK Downloader. The app must be sideloaded and unfortunitly does not retain all of its functionality on the Fire TV. Specifically, you cannot login to your YouTube account to view your subscriptions. But if you just like to browse popular videos and search for videos, this app does that better than the official Fire TV YouTube app.

One comment

There is also an app called TVtube that I was able to download without sideloading. It lets you sign in, like, and subscribe. My only complaint is that after using it for a while the video playback becomes choppy. I haven’t found a quick fix, but restarting the aftv fixes it without having to sign in to YouTube again. It works with a wireless USB keyboard, which is great.

You can also link you phone YT app to the aftv YT app to car from your phone.